


Justice Over All

by YoungTrust



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrinette, Bee!Kagami, Dragon!Chloe, LadyNoir - Freeform, Multi, akumanette, everyone else keeps canon miraculous though, everyone is aggressively supportive of our sunshine princess, give marinette a break 2k19, identity reveal(s), ladybug episode divergence, miracusquad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 13:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20657837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YoungTrust/pseuds/YoungTrust
Summary: Set in the episode "Ladybug."When Marinette is finally akumatized, a day of reckoning comes for Paris' heroes.





	Justice Over All

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. Here is the Ladybug-episode-divergence Princess Justice fic that I promised over on tumblr!
> 
> I’m still a bit sick, but I wanted to get something out before the end of the weekend. I eventually decided to just split this monster into parts. It should be two or three parts long, depending on what people want to see.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

_ Marinette _

“Princess Justice, I am Scarlet Moth.”

_ No, no, no, NO! _ This couldn’t be happening. She could feel him seeping into her mind like a puddle of oil, turning her already turbulent emotions up to 11 until she wanted to scream and cry and shout and punch something all at the same time. 

“--nette! Marinette!”

She dimly realized that she’d sunk to her knees, hands were clamped tightly over her ears. She felt a light pressure on her shoulders and forced her eyes open, trying her best to shove Hawkmoth’s voice to the back of her mind.  _ Adrien.  _ Because of course it was him kneeling before her, hands on her shoulders and emerald eyes looking so concerned. 

“Marinette, don’t listen to him! You can fight it. You’re the strongest person that I know.  _ Please _ , Marinette!” He looked close to tears. 

She tried her best to focus on him, to calm down, assure herself that there was some way to fix this -- to prove that she hadn’t… And then she saw Lila over his shoulder, smirking victoriously and the rage and sadness broke through the walls she’d tried to build in her mind.  _ Not yet _ \-- she frantically scrambled to get her earrings off -- she  _ couldn’t _ let them -- 

She pressed them into Adrien’s hand and shoved him away from her as the darkness overtook her vision. 

“ _ Yes, Scarlet Moth.” _

_ Adrien _

_ No!  _ Adrien pressed himself up against the lockers behind him as the bubbling red cloud swept over Marinette’s hunched form. When it cleared, his friend was gone -- in her place stood an imposing lady in red. Her pigtails had grown longer and darker and moved through the air like pools of negative space. She was blindfolded with fabric as red as blood and held a wickedly sharp sword in one hand and a set of scales in the other. Her head tilted in his direction and something that almost passed for a smile twisted her lips. 

“Thank you for trying Adrien, but I am Princess Justice now, and I  _ will _ have my vengeance.” The armored heels of her boots clicked across the locker room floor as she followed the other akumas out, no doubt starting to hunt for Lila who had slipped out of the room after she had succumbed to Hawkmoth’s control. 

For a second he couldn’t move, couldn’t think. He was going to have to fight  _ Marinette _ . He wasn’t sure if he  _ could _ \-- and there was another army of akumas and how was he -- 

“Adrien!”

He sharply shook his head and looked forward. Chloe and Alya were looking at him with concern. 

“Come on,” Chloe said. “We should get to my hotel. Ladybug will be looking for me and it will be safer for you guys there too. Sabrina ran ahead to tell Daddy what’s going on so he won’t be stupid and get akumatized again like last time.”

“I… err…” He couldn’t go with her -- his Lady would need him. His Princess  _ already _ needed him. “I should get home. Father worries if I’m not safe during attacks and I don’t have my phone, so I can’t tell him I’ll be somewhere else.” Did that sound good enough?

Chloe looked at him doubtfully, but before she could speak again, Alya cut in. 

“Right before she was akumatized, Marinette gave you something. Why would she do that?”

Adrien suddenly took notice of his right hand, still wrapped into a fist around something that was pressing uncomfortably into his palm. He loosened his fingers to reveal a pair of  _ very _ familiar earrings, and his heart stopped. 

A bright light emanated from the earrings in his palm and all three teens covered their eyes. When it dimmed, Tikki was floating in the air above his palm, looking absolutely distraught. She immediately flew towards him and hugged his neck as best as she could with her small arms, without seeming to notice the two other girls in the room, eyes blown wide as the recognized what was obviously a Ladybug-themed kwami that had appeared out of Marinette’s earrings. 

Their shock was only exacerbated when a dark shape flew out of Adrien’s jacket towards Tikki as if yanked by a magnet, wrapping small arms around her and starting to purr. 

Adrien closed his eyes, counted to ten, and opened them again, staring determinedly at Chloe and Alya, both of whom he had never actually seen at a loss for words. If the situation had been less grim, it might have been funny. 

“You can’t tell  _ anyone _ ,” he said with all the seriousness he could muster even as he raised a hand to comfort the two kwamis curled up in the crook of his neck. He couldn’t process right now. He’d think about everything that had occurred in the last two minutes later, but if he tried to think about it now, he’d shut down and he  _ couldn’t  _ do that. He looked down at Plagg wrapping himself around Tikki as if physically trying to hold her together. 

“Plagg?” he questioned softly. His normally caustic kwami looked at him with sad green eyes that already knew what he was going to say. “I think we need to find the Guardian.” 

_ Alya _

Marinette was  _ Ladybug _ . Ever since a kwami --  _ Ladybug’s kwami _ \-- had materialized out of her best friend’s earrings, Alya felt as though her world had been turned on its head. Everything suddenly made absolutely no sense, and yet more sense than it ever had before.  _ Of course _ Ladybug wouldn’t choose someone she hardly knew to wield a miraculous. That would be too unpredictable a situation and Ladybug, above all else, was a strategist. It explained how Marinette had been able to get her an interview with Ladybug, and how she always seemed to disappear when an akuma attacked. It explained --  _ no _ . 

_ “Lila’s a liar! I saw Ladybug call her out!” _

_ “A good journalist always checks her sources.”  _

_ “It was Lila! Lila framed me!” _

_ “Don’t jump to conclusions.” _

Alya saw  _ red _ . She dug her nails into her palms, focusing on the dull pain as she counted backward from ten. No. She had already failed Marinette -- her best friend, her  _ hero _ \-- once. She wouldn’t fail her again by getting akumatized. She looked up at Adrien. He looked just as shaken as she felt. 

“You two need to hide,” he eventually said. “I need to go and find the Guardian -- tell him what happened and -- I don’t know. Hopefully, he’ll know what to do.”

Alya bristled at the thought of being sidelined when her best friend was  _ hurt  _ and when it was partially her fault -- but before she could speak, Chloe scoffed and cut in. 

“Please, Adrikins. There’s an actual army of akumas loose in the city. You’re going to need all the backup you can get to even reach the guardian.  _ I’m _ coming with you, and I guess Cesiare can too.” Alya saw a strange, determined glint in the blonde’s eyes. Huh. Perhaps being Queen Bee had been good for her. 

“But --”

“No.” This time it was Alya’s turn. “Even if it’s supposed to be a secret, it doesn’t matter at this point. If we don’t fix this, Hawkmoth wins. You need all the help you can get.”

Adrien glanced down at the Plagg and received a hesitant nod. He took a deep breath. “Alright, let’s go.” 

_ Chloe _

Dupain-Cheng was  _ Ladybug _ . Scarlet Moth was back, he’d unleashed another army of akumas, and Ladybug was one of them. Hell if Chloe knew how to unpack all of  _ that _ at the moment. Fortunately, growing up as the daughter of Audrey Bourgeois had taught her to compartmentalize. That was good. It looked like Adrien -- Chat Noir -- and Cesiare were having trouble right now. She could have an existential crisis about bullying the idol that had trusted her with superpowers later. 

“Alright. Now, where is this Guardian? We need to come up with a plan to get to wherever he is without getting hit or captured by any akumas. We don’t know exactly who has been akumatized yet, but we should probably assume that everyone we don’t run into in person is an active akuma. We’ll have to get there as civilians, but that could work to our advantage -- we’ll be less of a target.” The steadiness in her voice surprised her. It appeared to surprise Adrien and Cesaire as well. Cesaire looked a bit sour that Chloe had said something before she had, but Adrien appeared happy that someone else was willing to take charge.

Adrien softly grabbed Tikki and Plagg and deposited them in his hair, mussing it around them to hide them. “I don’t know where the guardian is, so you’re going to have to guide us.”

“Alright, kid.” She heard Plagg say. “Let’s go.”

The three teens moved cautiously toward the locker room door. Just before they reached it, it slammed open from the outside. Chloe quickly positioned herself in front of Adrien, noting with pleasure that Cesaire had done the same. It appeared that the Ladyblogger wasn’t  _ totally _ incompetent. Admittedly, she wasn’t sure what they could do against and akuma, but they could at least hopefully provide enough of a distraction that Adrien could get away.

“Dudes! Zombizou, Princess Fragrance, and Reflecta bused into the classroom and everyone got akumatized?! What happened?” The newcomer looked around. “Where’s Lila? And Marinette?” 

The tension drained from her form -- it was just Lahiffe.

Cesaire relaxed out of her own fighting stance and gave her boyfriend a long look. “A lot happened. We’ll fill you in on the way.”

The “way” turned out to be a winding path through at least two arrondissements, ending at a movie theatre of all places. They’d stuck to small alleys as much as possible, moving as quietly as possible to avoid the scarlet akumas they occasionally saw nearby and overhead. Chloe wasn’t the only one who had let out a quiet curse when the group had seen Dark Cupid flying above them. She remembered how Dark Cupid had almost caused Hawkmoth’s victory on Heroes’ Day. Even if they made it to the Guardian, they’d have to be careful. 

It came as no surprise that the movie theatre that the kwamis had led them to was deserted. In unspoken agreement, the group moved as far from the glass front doors as possible once inside. They couldn’t chance a passing akuma seeing them. 

“Master? Master?” Adrien whisper-hissed as loudly as he dared into the empty lobby. When a familiar Hawaiian shirt moved out from behind the central kiosk, he nearly fainted from relief. 

For her part, Chloe was less than impressed. The so-called “Guardian of the Miraculous” was four-foot-nothing, looked like a strong wind would blow him over, and had the most atrocious fashion sense she’d ever seen outside an akuma. This impression was not improved when the old man fixed Adrien with a disapproving glare.

“Adrien, you know well that the miraculous are supposed to be kept secret. What is the meaning of this?”

Chloe could see the way he deflated, all too similar to the way he did when scolded by his asshole-emotionally-manipulative father. Oh  _ hell _ no, no on her watch. 

“Excuse me, Monsieur Guardian,” She cut across the old man before he could continue to badger Adrien. “He didn’t exactly have much of a choice. Have you looked outside lately? Thanks to a more startling than usual display of complete incompetence by several adults and what I can only assume is another Heroes’ Day-esque scheme of Hawkmoth’s, Ladybug has been akuamtized. We were there when it happened, and with an entire army of akumas loose in the city, we sure as hell weren’t going to let Paris’ only hope walk here alone.” Her arms were crossed over her chest and she leveled her very best Audrey Bourgeois glare at the small man. 

He blanched, and Chloe used the opportunity to edge a bit more protectively in front of Adrien. 

“Ladybug? Akumatized?” His frown grew deeper, and Chloe’s anger spiked again.

“If you’re going to try to blame her for this, don’t even fucking bother. I’ve literally never seen anyone with a more valid reason to be akumatized. She was framed, discredited, and expelled from school in the span of about five minutes. In case it escaped your notice, she’s fucking fifteen. She’s allowed to have feelings.” She was aware of Adrien, as well as Cesaire and Lahiffe openly gaping at her back. She was a bit surprised at her vehement defense of Dupain-Cheng…  _ Marinette _ , herself. She didn’t quite know how she felt about everything yet, but she figured that if the girl she’d bullied for years could trust her with literal superpowers on a repeat basis, she could defend her against a man that she could already tell had a  _ severe _ holier-than-thou complex. 

“Now,” she continued, “are you going to help us fix this mess, or are you going to continue blaming two people who’ve done nothing to cause it?”

_ Adrien _

Ever since he’d seen Tikki emerge from Marinette’s earrings, he’d been in shock. His Lady was his Princess, and he’d failed both sides of her. She’d been  _ akumatized _ because he’d been too naive to see that Lila’s lies were hurting the most important person in his life. He… he wasn’t sure that he could fight her. He hadn’t expected Chloe to step up and take charge so effectively, but he’d been more relieved than he’d like to admit that he could stand back, listen to Plagg’s quiet, reassuring murmurs in his ear, and try to forget that because of his own negligence he’d have to fight his Lady. Maybe it was cowardly, but he just couldn’t -- When Master Fu looked at him with such disapproval, he could feel his breath start to come faster and faster. Oh God, he’d failed. He was a terrible excuse for a Black Cat, and Master Fu was going to take his miraculous back --

The almost panic-attack was cut off by a sharp pressure on his arm. He looked down to see Plagg staring up at him with concern and shook himself out of whatever state he’d been in, just in time to hear Chloe’s impassioned defense of his Lady.

No sooner than she had finished speaking, Plagg cleared his throat, drawing attention to himself. “She’s right, you know. You may be the Guardian, but don’t forget that you never finished your formal training.” The Black Cat kwami spoke with an unusually cold and serious tone. “I shouldn’t need to remind you that you’re not infallible. I will not let another set of chosen be destroyed because you refused to believe that someone could know better than you. Bring my chosen the miracle box.”

Master Fu opened and closed his mouth several times, unsure of how to respond. He looked to a turtle kwami who had emerged to perch on his shoulder, but the kwami merely averted their eyes. Deflating, Master Fu turned around and pulled the box out from a compartment underneath the kiosk. As he opened it and presented it to Adrien, Plagg cut in once more. 

“And, so help me, if anything happens to Tikki’s bug because of this…” He let the sentence hang, staring at Fu in a way that made  _ Adrien _ want to step back. 

Master Fu paled but looked at Adrien. “Adrien Agreste,” his voice shook only slightly. “Your mission to protect Paris has never been more dire. You must choose allies that you can trust to fight beside you. After the battle is done, you must return the miraculous for safekeeping.”

He stared at the box laid out before him -- unimaginable power glinting up at him in the form of seemingly innocuous jewelry. Was this how Ladybug --  _ Marinette _ \-- felt every time she had to find allies for them? He’d once envied her the Guardian’s secrets, but standing here before the box, he took it all back. What if he chose wrong? He didn’t know who any of the other heroes were besides Luka and Kagami and --

“I --” he paused, voice cracking. “I don’t know who the other heroes are, Master. What if I choose wrong --” 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alya and Nino step up beside him, matching gentle smiles on their faces. 

“Rena Rouge and Carapace reporting for duty.” They said together.

Adrien felt himself melt in relief. He gently lifted the fox miraculous out of the box and placed it in Alya’s hands. She fastened it around her neck as Master Fu handed the bracelet that had been around his wrist to Nino. 

Adrien grabbed the Bee comb and looked back and Chloe, who was staring at her feet. 

“I can’t.” She whispered. 

Alya bristled. “After all this, you don’t want to help her?” 

Chloe looked up to reveal eyes glistening with tears. “You all saw Dark Cupid out there! Hawkmoth knows that I’m Queen Bee. If I come, I’ll be more of a liability than a help.”

Adrien looked down at the comb in his hand. She was right, but then who --? 

Master Fu cleared his throat. “If I may make a suggestion,” he said tentatively. “Miss. Bourgeois is correct that it is too risky for her to again become the Bee. However, if my memory serves me, there is another hero that can no longer wield her miraculous for the same reason. Judging by her earlier behavior, I believe that Miss. Bourgeois would be an excellent match for Longg, while the girl who was Ruukyo would suit Pollen quite well.”

Chloe looked shocked, but Adrien grinned widely, grabbing the Dragon choker and handing it to Chloe. As soon as her hands touched it, a brilliant light burst from it, and a dragonlike kwami -- Longg -- appeared. He stared at Chloe appraisingly for a moment and grinned approvingly. 

“Yes,” he said, practically purring, “This one suits me quite nicely. A leader wise enough to know when it is practical to step back. I will enjoy guiding you to greatness, fledgling.”

Adrien turned back to the miraculous box as Chloe properly met her kwami while Alya and Nino got re-acquainted with theirs. He grabbed the Bee’s comb and the Snake’s bracelet from the box before closing it, a new wellspring of confidence running through him. 

He had a team of people he trusted at his back. They would succeed. They had to. 

_ Alya _

Alya never thought she’d see the day that she’d feel reassured by the presence of Chloe Bourgeois, but in light of everything else that had happened in the past half an hour, she supposed it might be the least strange thing that had happened that day. She was impressed by how the other girl had handled the Guardian (boy if she hadn’t wanted to give him a piece of  _ her _ mind as well) and she certainly didn’t expect Chloe to turn down being Queen Bee. When she heard the blonde’s reasoning, she was even more surprised. 

While the Guardian suggested a bit of a miraculous swap, she leaned towards Nino, grabbing his hand gently to draw his attention away from Wayzz.

“Yeah, babe?”

She looked into his eyes. “We can’t make the same mistake that we made on Heroes’ Day, Nino. If one of us gets hit, the other needs to stay focused on the mission, okay?” For a moment, it looked like he was going to argue, but she cut him off. “Please, Nino. I -- I already messed up so bad. I need to know that even if I’m out of commission, you’ll protect her. Okay?”

The fight left him, and he sobered. “Alright Al. I promise.” 

Grateful that she had secured his promise, she turned her attention back to the room. Chloe was quietly talking with a small red dragon kwami, and Adrien had the Bee comb and another miraculous she didn’t recognize in his hands. 

“Alright,” he spoke. She was grateful that it looked like he’d gotten some of his confidence back. They’d all been pretty shaken to see Marinette akumatized, but she was his  _ partner _ , and he’d taken it the worst of them all. “I need the three of you to find Marinette. Figure out where she is, and keep her distracted. I’m going to go get some more help.” He paused. “Be careful. She might not have her earrings right now, but she’s still Ladybug. She’s the best of all of us -- this won’t be easy.” 

“You can count on us,” said Chloe. Alya and Nino nodded, and Adrien flashed them a grin. 

“Plagg, claws out!” he was out the door of the movie theatre in a flash of green light. 

Alya looked to her right at Nino and to her left at Chloe. An unspoken understanding passed between the three teens. “Let’s go,” she said. 

“Wayzz, shell on!”

“Trixx, let’s pounce!”

“Longg, bring the storm!”

  
  



End file.
